Transcript

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has recognized a computer model that might
help cities better plan for growth. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham
reports:

Attempts to predict urban growth are notorious because they’re often very inaccurate.
The EPA recently gave one of its national awards for ‘Smart Growth’ to the Massachusetts
Executive Office of Environmental Affairs for a statewide Smart Growth computer
program. The EPA says that program helps city leaders to understand the potential
effects of future growth. A town can use it to determine the impact of a proposed
development. It maps out growth patterns and predicts the cost for things such as
additional schools, police, and fire protection. Priscilla Geigis is with the Massachusetts
office. She says it can be used elsewhere.

“We have had some interest from states who are just looking at that as a model. With
some adaptations it could be changed to accommodate some other states.”

One official was quoted as saying the program is like the popular computer game “Sim
City” except this one is for real life.

Canadians are being asked to take public transportation and turn down the heat as Canada prepares to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. From Ottawa, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly has more:

Emergency money is being spent to stop an exotic invader. Some experts think the Asian carp could be a ecological disaster for Lake Michigan. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mike Simonson reports on recent measures to stop the fish:

Transcript

Some emergency money is being spent to stop an exotic invader. Some
experts think the Asian Carp could be a ecological disaster for Lake
Michigan. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mike Simonson reports
on measures to stop the fish:

The only thing keeping the Asian Carp from leaving the Mississippi River
system and entering Lake Michigan through a canal is an electrical barrier.
That barrier repels the fish, but a power outage could shut off the barrier, and
allow the carp to enter the Great Lakes.

The International Joint Commission and three federal agencies, including the
Environmental Protection Agency, put together 300-thousand dollars for a
back-up power source.

Tracy Mehan with the EPA says it’s important to act quickly.

“It’s a modest investment with a huge payoff in terms of avoiding, yet
another scourge to the Great Lakes fisheries. We’ve got 160 exotic species
that weren’t here in the last century and we didn’t need another one
especially something with such a high impact as the Asian Carp can have.”

Asian Carp grow up to 4-feet long and 100 pounds. They eat native fish,
and have no predator in this part of the world.

Transcript

This hunting season, there’s a lot more testing for a disease that’s killing deer in parts of
the Great Lakes region. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Chronic Wasting Disease is similar to Mad Cow Disease. In this instance, it attacks deer
and elk, causing them to waste away, become disoriented, and eventually die. It’s been
found in captive animals in Minnesota, in the wild deer population in Wisconsin and just
recently a deer in Illinois was found to have Chronic Wasting Disease. Carol Knowles is
with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. She says about 4,000 samples of
tissue from deer are being taken during the hunting season. They’ll be sent to labs to see
how far the disease has spread in that state. But because the labs are being swamped with samples, it
will take a while before anything is known.

“It will take months to get all of those results back, yes. But we hope to expedite the ones in northern Illinois where we know we had at least one
confirmed case.”

Other Great Lakes states are also testing for Chronic Wasting Disease in their deer herds,
hoping to stop the disease from spreading quickly.

Transcript

An interfaith coalition of religious leaders is calling for automakers to produce more fuel efficient vehicles. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jerome Vaughn has more:

For the Christian part of this coalition, the question is, ‘What Would Jesus Drive?’ The group says the nation’s automakers aren’t doing enough to make cars that pollute less and use less gas. The coalition which includes representatives from a variety of Christian and Jewish organizations says automakers have a moral responsibility to be good stewards of the planet. But Rabbi David Saperstien says that just isn’t happening.

“Virtually all the cars the American auto industry is manufacturing are contributing to poisoning the air, warming the planet, punishing the poor, weakening American security by dependence on foreign oil, jeopardizing the future of our children, just plain violating that covenant with our creator.”

Ford and General Motors say they want to show the coalition how they are making progress on more environmentally-friendly cars.

A city along Lake Michigan is fighting the construction of a waste-treatment plant. The town filed a lawsuit against the local waste-treatment company that wants to dry and burn sludge from half the surrounding county. City officials say they don’t want an eye sore on their lake front and environmentalists are worried about mercury getting into the lake. But the sanitary district says it has a system that will virtually eliminate emissions. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Annie MacDowell reports, environmentalists say that’s not enough:

Transcript

A city along Lake Michigan is fighting the construction of a waste-treatment plant. The
town filed a lawsuit against the local waste-treatment company that wants to dry and burn
sludge from half the surrounding county. City officials say they don’t want an eye sore on
their lake front and environmentalists are worried about mercury getting into the lake.
But the sanitary district says it has a system that will virtually eliminate emissions. As
the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Annie Macdowell reports, environmentalists say
that’s not enough:

After rolling out of bed in the morning, what’s the first thing you do? Do you use the
toilet? Take a shower? Brush your teeth? Probably one or all of the above. And what
happens to that unwanted dirty water? It just vanishes, right? Flushes into oblivion?
Disappears down the drain? Wrong. All that scummy sludge heads straight for your
local waste water treatment plant.

The North Shore Sanitary District along Lake Michigan in northern Illinois receives 187
tons of waste water a day. That adds up to 20 trillion gallons of the stuff a year. And in
among all that waste there are 26 different toxic metals. At this point, North Shore is
trucking the toxic sludge to landfills and dumping it. Brian Jensen is the general manager
of North Shore. He says toxic chemicals aren’t necessarily safe in a landfill because a
landfill liner can leak.

“If in fact, that liner were to leak, and there’s been a history around our country and in
Europe that these liners do leak, when that happens, the environmental liability is
extremely significant.”

With these worries in mind, a couple of years ago Jensen started looking around for a
new way to dispose of the sludge. He says a process called “sludge-drying” was the best
option.

Here’s how the system works: the sludge is pumped into a dryer where most of the water
is sucked out. Then the dried sludge is burned as fuel for the next part of the process –
the melter. The melter burns up the organic part of the sludge at 3000 degrees. That’s
hot enough to melt heavy metals. So after everything else is burned away, what remains
are the toxic metals locked up in a glass matrix that looks a lot like lava. It’s called glass
aggregate. It can be used in concrete where it’s sealed and can no longer pollute water or
soil.

The only toxic metal that doesn’t go into the glass matrix meltdown is mercury. That’s
because in the hot melter, mercury becomes a vapor. Over the course of the year, north
shore gets about 33 pounds of mercury – a third of it comes from fillings in people’s
teeth. The rest is from industry and commercial sources.

People in the area and environmentalists, object to the idea of the plant emitting all that
mercury into the air. That’s because it could further contaminate Lake Michigan which
already is contaminated by mercury from coal-burning power plants. Cameron Davis is
the head of the Lake Michigan Federation. He says mercury is a dangerous neurotoxin.

“You know the MadHatter in Alice in Wonderland? That character was developed
because in the old days, people who made hats actually used mercury in the hat
manufacturing process, and that mercury being around it in the manufacturing of hats,
would cause people, literally, to go insane, to go crazy.”

Davis says Lake Michigan already has a fish advisory because mercury has contaminated
the water so badly. If people eat the fish, especially expectant mothers and children,
there could be serious health effects. Mothers could pass mercury poisoning onto their
infants. Children’s bodies are especially susceptible because they’re developing so fast.
Davis says anyone who cares about the environment is against the construction of any
new source of mercury emissions.

But Brian Jensen says the North Shore sludge incinerator will fix that problem too. The
plans include a filtration system, to catch mercury in the vapor state. The air travels
through carbon canisters and the mercury particles cling to the carbon. The canisters last
for up to 5 years and then the mercury is recycled and reused. The result is something
less than two pounds of mercury emissions a year. Jensen says that’s such a small
amount that today’s scientific instruments can’t detect it in the normal emissions each day.
They’ve tried. And in the end, Jensen says it could very well be that the new North Shore
Plant will emit no mercury at all.

But Cameron Davis says any uncertainty is unacceptable.

“We do want to encourage different ways to be able to get to zero and if we are in fact
getting to zero, then we’ve got a different game here, and that’s important, but we are
talking about zero.”

But Davis doesn’t have any better ideas for getting rid of the sludge. He says North
Shore should continue landfilling for now.

Michael Murray with the National Wildlife Federation’s Great Lakes Office says there is
a better alternative. It’s a process called land application. That’s when sludge is used as
fertilizer for crops.

“There’s a study published on work in France recently where they looked at number of
different options for sewage sludge treatment and they found that land application in
general had the lowest environmental cost, in other words it was the best environmental
option.”

Murray says companies must have a really good pre-treatment program if they’re going
to use land application. That means capping levels of toxic metals before they get into
the sludge.

Brian Jensen at North Shore says he looked into land application and saw too many
problems. He says North Shore already has an award-winning pre-treatment program,
but they still get too many metals to land apply. And he’s heard about problems like e-coli bacteria growths from the fecal matter in the sludge. Beyond that, he says they just
have too much sludge and not enough land to fertilize.

Jensen says he’s confident the judge will not let the lawsuit stop north shore sanitary
district from building the plant. It already has the permits from the Illinois Environmental
Protection Agency. He’s amazed that people are giving north shore such a hard time,
when right next door to where they want to build the waste treatment plant, a coal-burning incinerator emits up to 450 pounds of mercury a year.

“The North Shore Sanitary District is truly people that are concerned about the
environment. And this process, even though it probably, it does, in fact, cost a little more
to own and operate than a landfill, the environmental gains, I’m saying the environmental
gains, not losses, are significantly greater than any other sludge disposal method.”

Jensen says environmentalists should be the first to recognize when a waste water
treatment plant is doing the very best job that’s possible with the most recent technology
available instead of criticizing the effort.

For more than one hundred years, man has made changes to rivers and lakes. Locks, dams, and redirecting waterways has raised water levels and increased river flows. One effect has been the near disappearance of islands that once provided habitat for fish, plants, and birds. Some groups are trying to rebuild those islands. But the concept of a man-made island is not universally accepted. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports:

Transcript

For more than one hundred years, man has made changes to rivers and lakes. Locks, dams,
and redirecting waterways has raised water levels and increased river flows. One effect
has been the near disappearance of islands that once provided habitat for fish, plants, and
birds. Some groups are trying to rebuild those islands. But the concept of a manmade
island is not universally accepted. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl
reports:

Jim Baldwin is driving his small boat along an island in the Illinois River, the body of
water that connects the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River. He is an environmentalist
that has been watching this portion of the river for years, and likes what he sees. He’s retired now,
and spends most of his time either at his cabin on the riverfront just north of Peoria, Illinois
or working with environmental groups looking to preserve rivers and streams. These
islands are not natural. The Army Corps of Engineers made them ten years ago. Baldwin
says since then, it’s not uncommon for him to take his boat out and see fifty to a hundred
pelicans.

“Everybody tells me that until this island was built, they never even stopped here. Now
some of them stay year round.”

The Corps built the islands by dredging silt and sediment that had been clogging nearby
portions of the river. The theory is the manmade islands would provide a buffer from the
river flow, and create an area of deep water that could provide habitat for sport fish. It
would also provide a feeding area for migrating birds.

John Marlin is a researcher with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. He says the
program has been a success.

“The islands stop the large waves that come across the lake and there is a calm area behind
the islands the waterfowl seem to appreciate. Also, the birds such as pelicans and alot of the wading birds are using
the islands as resting areas.”

Marlin says the islands are growing thick vegetation, and the soil dredged from the river
has proven to be free of any pollutants that are present in some river sediments.

But not all environmentalists sing the praises of manmade islands. Some believe these
new islands will suffer the same fate of the natural islands that are now gone.

Tom Edwards is the head of River Rescue, an environmental group focusing on rivers. He
says the man made islands are only a temporary fix:

“The islands are an illusion. All of the wonderful that they say are going to result from the islands are not going to result. We have 113 islands in the river right now, and it hasn’t
resulted from a single one of them. So let’s learn from what’s here right now. So they are
going to dig the water deeper around these islands and hope that’s going create deep water.
It will be very temporary. Deep water amounts to a silt trap.”

Edwards says it is just a matter of time until the sediment fills up the deep water areas created by the manmade islands. He says until there are significant changes in land-use policy that keep sediment from entering rivers, manmade islands will only be a quick fix.

But river activist Jim Baldwin says many states and local governments are starting to adopt
land use policies that will keep sediment out of the Midwest Rivers and streams. He also
says using dredged materials to create the islands will help alleviate the problem. He says most importantly, the manmade islands are getting the job done.

“It does two things. Number one is it provides the deep water that we need for fisheries.
The island itself will grow trees and habitats for all kinds of birds. It will do that. That’s what it’s all based on is those two things.”

While the debate over man made islands continues, the Army Corps of Engineers is proposing to build two more islands on the Illinois River in the coming years.

A new study shows that fertile men in more rural areas have lower sperm counts and less vigorous sperm than men in urban centers. It’s the first study that shows that semen quality differs significantly between regions of the United States. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Annie MacDowell reports, agricultural chemicals may be to blame:

Transcript

A new study shows that fertile men in more rural areas have lower sperm
counts and less vigorous sperm than men in urban centers. It’s the first
study that shows that semen quality differs significantly between
regions of the United States. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Annie
MacDowell reports, agricultural chemicals may be to blame:

Transcript

New research is showing that a foreign fish might be aiding the transfer
of toxic substances into sportfish populations. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Mark Brush has more:

Fish such as bass, trout, and walleye normally eat small native fish.
Now, these large sportfish have learned how to eat a new foreign fish – round
gobies. The gobies can contain toxic pollutants because they feed on
zebra mussels. And because of the way zebra mussels feed they can take up
a lot of pollutants like PCBs.

David Jude is a research scientist at the University of Michigan. He’s
been studying fish living near polluted areas.

“Yes, a lot of sportfish are eating round gobies, we found them in a lot of
predators we looked at in the St. Clair River – perch, brown trout,
walleyes – so the possibility of transferring PCBs into a
lot of the sportfish that people catch is certainly real.”

Jude says he hopes his research will determine ways to control goby
populations where they’ve become a problem.

Transcript

Some Midwest states are highlighted in a new report
that looks at what states are doing to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach
reports:

The federal government wants no part of international
treaties aimed at reducing pollution linked to global
warming. But a report by the Pew Center On Global Climate
Change says about one-third of the states have taken significant
steps on their own. The study mentions Minnesota’s effort to
plant trees that may help reduce energy consumption and absorb
carbon. Wisconsin is praised for requiring large polluters to
report their carbon dioxide emissions.

University of Michigan professor Barry Rabe offered the study. He
says the budget deficits faced by many states may stifle additional work.

“And there may be an unfortunate irony here that at the
moment when political interest in doing something to
reduce greenhouse gases is greatest, the fiscal capacity to
fund some of these programs and implement them may be at a very,
very low point.”

The Pew Center says the state efforts are no substitute for a
comprehensive national plan. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium,
this is Chuck Quirmbach reporting.